Knotty Gingerbread Damsel
by DavidPresents
Summary: A damsel in distress version of the old story, with a few other changes.  Rated for light bondage.


Once upon a time there was a lively, young, blonde damsel named Goldilocks who had several adventures in the Knotty Fairytale Series. One hot and humid afternoon, Goldilocks was busy posing in wintry scenes for a Christmas catalogue... for, in order for the catalogue to be ready in time for shoppers to order, it was necessary to produce it in the summer.

Of course, Goldilocks was not the only model working that day; there were Santa's elves, toy soldiers, snowpeople, and many more besides. Goldilocks was a Gingerbread Girl. Her costume started with a minidress, light brown bordered by red, pink, and white, with a ruffled skirt and scalloped shoulder straps. She also wore a tiny white apron, red candy cane striped stockings, gold pumps, and a chocolate-brown, miniature top hat pinned to the side of her head.

The events of the photo shoot can be passed over lightly, for the real story begins afterwards, as Goldilocks, very glad the day's work was over, lightly traipsed off the outdoor set and waved in excitement as she saw her boyfriend, Rudolf, approaching.

"Hi, Goldi!" he called out in greeting.

"Hi, Rudy!" she called back, lifting the hem of her skirt with both hands and curtseying cutely.

"Hi, Goldi!" called out another voice.

"Hi, Marcus!" she greeted, turning around and performing another curtsey.

Marcus was the crown prince of West Zhdalskt, a tiny country that anyone, with the aid of a powerful magnifying glass, can easily find on any reliable world atlas.

"Goldi, what's going on here?" demanded Rudolf, frowning at Prince Marcus who imperiously glowered back.

"Oops," said Goldilocks. In her excitement to see Rudolf, she had forgotten that she had asked Prince Marcus to join her after work! The two young men glared hostilely at one another and then at Goldilocks, silently demanding an explanation. Goldilocks, not having one ready to give, dashed away suddenly, and, after a moment of stunned silence, her two admirers followed swiftly.

Goldilocks built a large lead over her pursuers, which (considering she wore high heels and they wore trainers) revealed the degree of her desperate motivation to elude them. The merry chase led them from the outskirts of town into a dense forest. After running for some time, Goldilocks paused and steadied herself with one hand against a tall maple tree.

"I can't see them, but I can still hear them back there," she said breathlessly. "Maybe all this running is a mistake. I should just go explain, I mean, how mad can they be?"

A high-pitched shout made her change her mind.

"There you are, you boyfriend stealer!" Princess Nina raced into the small clearing and once again, Goldilocks was running through her forest.

As she went, she quickly composed a brief couplet, which she tossed over one shoulder: "Well, you can run fast, and you can run quick, but you'll never catch me, I'm the Gingerbread Chick!"

"You'd better run quick, all right, because if I catch you, you won't have your golden hair anymore!" promised the Princess loudly. She was the heir to the throne of East Zhdalskt and, as the alert reader will have divined, the girlfriend of Prince Marcus. She was in America attending school, but, as her country was a poor one, spending the summers working as a model. She had been at the photo shoot, dressed as a Sugar Plum Fairy and had witnessed the entire earlier scene there with Goldilocks.

Goldilocks turned a tight corner and spied a smaller, secondary path branching to one side. She adroitly spun onto this new venue and paused several steps in, looking anxiously through the thick leafs to discover Princess Nina continuing on the main trail.

"Whew!" Goldilocks exclaimed, leaning to rest against another tree, this one a cedar. "I'm sure glad all that chasing is over!"

…..

In a clearing in a forest of maples, cedars, and other stately trees reposed a small cottage, the summer home of the Three Bears. Papa Bear, as has been related in an earlier Knotty Fairytale, was a notorious gangster, who had once arranged Goldilocks' kidnapping over certain financial indiscretions her father had committed with him. Eventually, Papa Bear had been apprehended by the authorities and sentenced to twenty years incarceration at the New York State Zoo, a stay shortened when he had executed a daring escape.

He peered anxiously out the curtained windows; he lived with the continual fear that one day the Animal Control Officers would appear and return him to captivity. As he studied his backyard, he gave a shout of anger. A short distance away stood Goldilocks, dressed in her Gingerbread Girl costume and leaning against a tree, quite erroneously imagining her troubles were over for the day. Papa Bear, entirely forgetting he was supposed to be lying low, rushed out of his house, growling furiously.

Papa Bear's noisy approach alerted Goldilocks to her danger, so once again darted along the main forest path.

As she flew along, she passed Princess Nina coming in the opposite direction, for Nina, having failed to locate Goldilocks, had retraced her path. The Princess gave a startled yelp and turned, only to collide with Papa Bear. The two fell to the ground in a tangle; they rose quickly, only to fall once again when Rudolf and Prince Marcus crashed into them.

These accidents provided Goldilocks with a considerable lead over her pursuers, but she did not slacken her speed for an instant, keeping her legs moving until she heard a voice call out:

"Hey, baby."

It was The Wolf, lying peacefully on a broad branch of a beech tree, some ten feet above Goldilocks' head. Goldilocks paused, but then, hearing the sound of pounding footsteps drawing closer, turned to run once again, quickly remarking, in a slight alteration of her earlier words, "Well, you can run quick, and you can run fast, but you'll never catch me, I'm the Gingerbread Lass!"

The Wolf had no intention of running after Goldilocks at any speed, but every intention of catching her all the same, for the simple reason that that was his usual reaction to the sight of any attractive human female, particularly one dressed as fetchingly as was Goldilocks. There were several coils of rope on the tree limb next to him, as improbable as that may sound, for he always had kept some handy. He tossed out a lasso. "Eep!" gasped Goldilocks; she was drawn up into the beech tree with The Wolf!

"Are you doing okay, baby?" The Wolf asked her, speaking very loudly. "You look a bit run down!"

"Wolfy, please, keep quiet!" pleaded Goldilocks in a whisper. "They'll hear you."

"I wonder what's up with Nina and Whatshisname?" asked The Wolf, not lowering his voice in the slightest. He observed with interest as the Princess, having paused nearby, was repeatedly striking Prince Marcus with her flimsy fairy wand.

"Wolfy, I really need to get going," announced Goldilocks. No one was directly below her just then; this was her chance to get away quietly. "If you could move aside so I could climb down…"

"In that dress, baby?" asked The Wolf.

"I have to try."

"I think you'd better stay up here," he decided, reaching for the rope once again.

Poor Goldilocks did not dare object, for fear of attracting the attention of her pursuers. The Wolf wound the rope about her, tying her legs together and her arms against her side; her back rested against the tree branch.

"Open up, baby," urged The Wolf, tying a knot in the center of a broad, purple scarf.

"No!" answered Goldilocks defiantly, snapping her lips closed.

The Wolf shrugged his shoulders and leaned forward. He cupped his paws to his mouth and took a deep breath.

"Okay, okay!" hissed Goldilocks, cooperating fully as The Wolf gagged her.

She wiggled her arms and legs slightly, trying to get as comfortable as she could.

"Goldi, where are you?" demanded Rudolph. "Come out, I just want to talk to you! She needs a good talking to," he continued, speaking more softly. "I'll tie her up so she'll have to listen to every word I have to say, and I have a lot!"

"I just want to talk to you too, Goldi!" added Prince Marcus.

"Don't you ever even think of speaking to her again!" yelled Princess Nina. Her wand, destroyed from her repeated uses of it on her boyfriend, was of no further use to her, so she snatched the costume crown from her head and started using that. "She'd better hope I don't find her; I'll bind her to a tree stump and ruin that golden hair of hers!"

"You don't mean…," gasped the Prince in horror.

"Yes!" she exclaimed. "I'll dye her hair! I bet you won't be so keen on her when she's got pink locks!"

"How are you going to do that?" asked Marcus, trying to distract her.

"I can use some berries to make a dye." She tossed the shattered crown aside and began searching among some bushes.

"I'll keep her tied up in my cabin," rumbled Papa Bear, "until her old man can pay up!"

Goldilocks winced as she heard those words, knowing her father could never pay his gambling debts. She gave a muffled groan of despair. "Lying bound and gagged in this tree isn't exactly where I'd like to be right now," she thought, "but I think I'm a lot better off up here than down there!"


End file.
